You know when a plan comes thru...

[RedRamer]

Well, call it luck or whatever, but I gota tell you about a close call I had this summer.

I was reading another thread about weights / overloads / speed and I can give you my exeprience for whatever it's worth.

I got a GCWR of 16,000# and travel with 14,500+-#.

Well this Datsun pickup decides to change lanes one lane over to the right of me and up maybe 3-4 cars. I'm in the midle of 3 lanes in real heavy cottage getting back home type of traffic.

All of a suden that Datsun hits his brakes... His truck instantly goes sideways, he's smokin and all hell brakes loose.

All I see if RED and all the cars in front of me are hitting their brakes hard. I got 3 deep all stopping and the guy right in front of me knew I was behind him and I could see keeping it as close as he could to the guy in front of him.

All tell, when the smoke cleared, I was about 5 feet behind the guy in front of me and every one else was bunmper to bumper.

We were all cruising at about 110kph, maybe 60 mph.

You know what I think saved my butt. .

1) not being overloaded

2) the trailer hitch

If i'd been over 16k# I'm prety sure I would never have stopped as fast as the cars. Hell my cap was through the roof , I was all eyeballs and I couldn't push that pedal any harder. And that hitch made sure that trailer stayed right behind me without moving an inch eitherway. It always did do that and this time it paid off big time.

My wife still talks about "that close call".

Damage... I lost 2 studs on the passenger side front trailer axle, and never noticed till I got home. That tire must have been bouncing like a sonofagun.

Darn Dodge pulls so well, you forget you're pullin sometimes.

 

[MPatrick]

Hard stops

Hey RedRamer,



Last Friday afternoon, My Wife, 2 labs and myself were traveling thru a small town near where We live. I had the TailGator hitched up. I'm in a left turn lane and waiting for the light. The light turns green and I start to move. The stupid light only allows about 5 cars through - I'm no 5. I am doing about 20 to 25 mph. The light turns yellow and the lady ahead of me slams on her brakes as she is at the stop bar. My gross weight is at 16K also. I slammed my brakes and I could feel the trailer pushing and the ABS working overtime. I stopped about 4 or 5 feet behind her. She heard me and would not look in her mirror. I know it would have been my fault if I hit her. I am glad for good brakes.

 

[TowPro]

Re: Hard stops

Not meant to be an advertisement for Jordan brake controllers, but in a panic stop, my truck stops better with the trailer behind me then it does empty, and I never feel the camper pushing.



When the brake pedal goes down, the cable turns on the controller and you never have to feel "inertia" before the trailer brakes come on.

Originally posted by MPatrick

. I slammed my brakes and I could feel the trailer pushing .

 

[RedRamer]

MP

You know what, now that you mention it, I can't remeber if the ABS kicked in or not.

I know in my car when they kick in you get a noise like a fast machine gun plus the pulsating brake pedal... but I can't recal anything like that when this hapened. . Hmmm



Twopro, you might have point there... maybe it does stop faster with a trailer on, I wouldn't know.

 

[MPatrick]

Brake Controller

Does anyone know what the best way to adjust my controller?

I can't remember what brand I have. It's 2 and half years old. It has 2 adjustments not counting the manual button. One is for the voltage and the other is for the amount of pressure on the brake.



When I set the pressure about 60% and up, The trailer starts to brake too fast.



Should I adjust the voltage?

 

[RedRamer]

If you go to dexteraxles.com they have a help file there for adjusting and checking you controller to make sure it's set up right.

 

[ImagesThatSing]

Originally posted by RedRamer

If you go to dexteraxles.com they have a help file there for adjusting and checking you controller to make sure it's set up right.

I wanted to save that file for checking next spring, but when I copied and pasted the above url then added the www.

I got a generic (this site is planned for development but take a look at all this other stuff) site.



Here is the copied and pasted url from my browser address window

http://www.dexteraxles.com/

to remove the doubt that the problem might be between my keyboard and my chair